What keyword density is
Keyword density is the share of a text taken up by one word or phrase. It is the number of times the word appears, divided by the total number of words, multiplied by 100. If a 500-word article uses "sourdough" 10 times, its density is 2 percent. The formula is shown under the table so you can always check the numbers yourself.
Before
Fresh bread is baked every morning. Fresh bread sells out fast.
After
11 words in total "fresh bread" appears 2 times Density: 2 ÷ 11 × 100 = 18.18%
How words and phrases are counted
Words are counted the way the word counter counts them, so contractions and hyphenated words count as one. Phrases are made of neighbouring words, and a phrase is never allowed to begin or end with a stop word. That keeps "fresh bread" in the list and drops "the bread". Stop words are very common words such as the, and, of and is. Each language version of this site uses its own list.
Using the filters
- Ignore stop words is on by default, so the table shows meaningful words.
- Minimum word length hides very short words. The default of 3 removes most fragments.
- Ignore numbers hides years, prices and other numeric tokens.
- Exclude these words hides words you already know are everywhere, such as your brand name.
Is there an ideal density?
No. Search engines do not publish a target percentage, and chasing one tends to produce awkward writing. Use this tool as a mirror instead: it shows which words dominate your text, whether your main topic is clearly present, and whether one word is repeated far more often than it needs to be. The page shows a gentle warning when a single word makes up more than 5 percent of all words, which is usually a sign the text could use more variety.
Tips and common mistakes
Check your main phrase, not only single words, because people search with phrases. Read the highlighted occurrences to see whether the keyword sits naturally in your sentences. Also remember that the percentages depend on the total length: a short text will always show higher densities than a long one. To judge how easy the same text is to read, try the readability checker.